Sant' Ilario eBook

would, through his nostrils, bring vividly before
him that midnight meeting amid the ruins of the barracks,
just as the savour of a certain truffle might bring
back the memory of a supper at Voisin’s, or as,
twenty years hence, the pasty grittiness of rough
maize bread would make him remember the days when
he was chasing brigands in the Samnite hills.
But this was not to be the case this time. There
was more matter for reminiscence than a ray of moonlight
on a fair face, or the smell of crumbling mortar.

There was a deep and sincere devotion on both sides,
in two persons both singularly capable of sincerity,
and both foresaw that the result of this love could
never be indifference. The end could only be
exceeding happiness, or mortal sorrow. Anastase
and Faustina were not only themselves in earnest;
each knew instinctively that the other would be faithful,
a condition extremely rare in ordinary cases.
Each recognised that the obstacles were enormous,
but neither doubted for a moment that means would
be found to overcome them.

In some countries the marriage of these two would
have been a simple matter enough. A man of the
world, honourable, successful, beginning to be famous,
possessed of some fortune, might aspire to marry any
one he pleased in lands where it is not a disgrace
to have acquired the means of subsistence by one’s
own talent and industry. Artists and poets have
sometimes made what are called great marriages.
But in Rome, twenty years ago, things were very different.
It is enough to consider the way in which Montevarchi
arranged to dispose of his daughter Flavia to understand
the light in which he would have regarded Faustina’s
marriage with Anastase Gouache. The very name
of Gouache would have raised a laugh in the Montevarchi
household had any one suggested that a woman of that
traditionally correct race could ever make it her own.
There were persons in Rome, indeed, who might have
considered the matter more leniently. Corona
Sant’ Ilario was one of these; but her husband
and father-in-law would have opened their eyes as wide
as old Lotario Montevarchi himself, had the match
been discussed before them. Their patriarchally
exclusive souls would have been shocked and the dear
fabric of their inborn prejudices shaken to its deepest
foundations. It was bad enough, from the point
of view of potential matrimony, to earn money, even
if one had the right to prefix “Don” to
one’s baptismal name. But to be no Don and
to receive coin for one’s labour was a far more
insurmountable barrier against intermarriage with
the patriarchs than hereditary madness, toothless
old age, leprosy, or lack of money.